The present invention relates, in general, to communication systems, and more particularly to management of service in cable communication systems.
Cable communication systems are being designed to handle a wide variety of services including telephony, broadcast television, video phones and large bandwidth data. One way of integrating these services is by using a system similar to present cable television systems. However, new methods must be used in order to efficiently use resources such as bandwidth while still supplying the customer with acceptable service and meeting the additional requirements of a two-way communication system.
Typical cable television systems have fixed subscriber groups (such as a neighborhood of households) that are associated with certain particular transceivers at the cable plant headend. These subscriber groups are sometimes referred to as service area groups. Systems such as these, however, have several drawbacks. For instance, service will be interrupted if the headend transceivers or subscriber units must be regrouped or reorganized. For example, if the number of subscribers is changed and groups must be modified, service will likely be interrupted to at least some of the existing subscribers. This is unacceptable for services such as telephony.
Also, existing cable television systems have the drawback of typically requiring an operator to configure the cable television set-top box at the customer location. In existing cable television systems, security and authentication information is typically entered at the manufacturing facility or the customer location. Initialization of the cable television set top box requires the operator to enter information at the subscriber location.
Therefore, there exists a need for a flexible system that can be efficiently managed that allows for remotely configuring subscriber units and reorganizing service area groups (also refereed to as migrating subscriber units) without the disruption of service.